


Myth and Science

by nagi_schwarz



Category: Merlin (TV), Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 03:52:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14417088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the 2018 Intoabar Ficathon: Evan Lorne walks into a bar and meets...Morgana!In a land of Myth and a time of Science, Evan Lorne needs to acquire a ZPM, and Morgana wants a place of her own.





	Myth and Science

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to the ineffable Brumeier for her beta work and encouragement.

Three years ago, Atlantis had sent a team to MX8-223 on recon, and the result had been imprisonment, political upheaval, and Major Merquise nearly being burned at the stake for “sorcery”. Unfortunately for Evan and his recon team, the previous team had picked up energy readings that Rodney was sure were from a mostly-charged ZPM, so Evan and his team were black on Planet Salem Witch Hunt to look for said ZPM. Surely enough time had elapsed that no repeat witch hunts would occur, right?  
  
Right.  
  
The planet had a space gate, and Evan had flown the cloaked jumper for extensive recon before finding a place to land. The planet had a thriving culture and political scene, multiple kingdoms on the single populated landmass. Technologically the indigenous peoples were medieval, Western European in dress and society. The kingdom where Merquise and his team were thrown into the castle dungeons was called Camelot, which made some sense, as both Merlin and Morgana had been Ancients. Names that were mystical and fantastical on Earth were likely commonplace among the Ancients.   
Based on what Merquise and his team has learned while incarcerated, Ancient technology was seen as “magic”, which was illegal in Camelot. Also, Camelot’s king, a haggard old man named Uther, who’d had Merquise tortured, believed that his enemies in the adjacent kingdom of Cenred were allied with magic users.   
  
If Evan and his team wanted to acquire that ZPM from Camelot, their best chance of laying low without discovery was just over the border in Cenred’s kingdom. If Camelot’s enemies were Cendred’s allies and subjects, they might be willing to give up intel on what was likely seen as either an illegal magical artefact or treasure.   
  
The best place to get local gossip, Evan knew, was the local watering hole.   
  
The closest he had to medieval gear was his leather uniform jacket, a long-sleeved uniform shirt, uniform pants, boots, and a cloak he borrowed from Dr. Crawford, who was Atlantis’s premier DM and much sought after in the science division, mostly for his DM skills, but also because he had a vast and rich medieval cosplay wardrobe. Dr. Crawford had offered Evan a full medieval get-up: lace-up breeches, knee-high boots, shirtsleeves that laced at the collar, a leather jerkin, even a sword and some armor, but Evan had declined, because he wasn’t used to wearing that kind of clothing and needed the combat mobility provided by his uniform, and also because - no. Just no. He’d feel awkward in those clothes, and what he needed was to be loose, comfortable, at ease while he attempted to build a thieving crew.  
  
Building a Thieving Crew was another course Evan had skipped in Major School. In fact, Stargate 101 and Pegasus 101 were courses that none of his instructors at Air Force Staff and Command could have even imagined, but here he was, sitting on a stool in an honest-to-goodness alien medieval tavern, pretending to sip at a tankard of ale at the bar and doing his best to look cool and casual.  
  
He couldn’t wear his radio earpiece, because that would stand out too much. Luckily for him and the rest of his team - the usual suspects of Coughlin, Billick, and Reed, plus eager Marines Maxwell, Chang, Yuy, and Barton - they were the guinea pigs for one of McKay’s newest experiments, smartphones whose bluetooth connections were amplified on the jumper’s subspace communicator. Theoretically, their smartphones were connected from anywhere on the planet. Evan had his tucked into his pocket so he’d feel it vibrate if his teammates, keeping an eye on things from the cloaked jumper at the edge of the forest closest to this village, noticed anything awry.  
The barkeep was a broad-shouldered man in a faded brown leather jerkin, grizzled and one-eyed and who looked like he could hold his own in a fight.  
  
“Haven’t seen you here before,” he growled.  
  
Everyone so far had accents Evan associated with the British Isles, but given that what he was hearing was the gate translation system, he had no clue what they really sounded like, or if his accent would sound strange to them.  
  
“Just passing through,” Evan said.  
  
“Where are you headed?”  
  
“Camelot, if fortune permits.” Evan might or might not have watched a lot of spy movies and heist movies in preparation for this mission.  
  
“Fortune?” The barkeep raised his eyebrows.  
  
“That is what I seek,” Evan said. “Or take, as skill and manpower allow.” He was prepared to go through this spiel at more than one tavern, as he and his team had scouted multiple towns and villages with taverns from the air, but for once it would be nice if the universe could let things go well on the first try.  
  
“Think yourself skilled, do you?”   
  
Evan shrugged, smiled demurely. “Enough to make my way.” He slid a hand out from under his cloak, pushed his sleeve back so the barkeeper could see the hideously gaudy gold bracelet that Dr. Jones in anthropology had let him borrow.   
  
Evan and his team had been given a considerable amount of gold coin to pay for help if the need arose.  
  
“If you’ve such skill, why do you seek manpower?”   
  
Good. The barkeep was no stranger to the kind of task Evan had in mind.  
  
“The prize I seek is incredibly valuable,” Evan said, “but acquiring it involves considerable risk.”  
  
“How considerable?”  
  
Evan leaned and lowered his voice. “The castle treasury in Camelot.”  
  
The barkeep rocked back on his heels, eyes wide. “You’re mad.”  
  
“Ambitious, is the term I prefer.” Evan shrugged, doing his best to exude the kind of zoomie confidence that made Marines hate Air Force officers.  
  
Arrogance, Marines called it.  
  
The barkeep’s gaze flickered away from Evan, and he said, “But fortune may be smiling down on you.”  
  
Evan turned, followed his gaze, and saw a woman standing in the doorway of the tavern.  
  
She was Snow White personified, pale skin and black hair that tumbled around her face in thick curls, a soft pink mouth, and cold, ice-blue eyes. If Snow White had been the villain, been the witch, she’d have looked like that woman, tall and stately in a thick black cloak with a fur-lined hood.  
  
She took in her surroundings in a single pass, swept across the tavern, and poised herself on a stool at the bar so there was one between her and Evan. She ordered mulled wine.  
  
The barkeep said, “Yes, milady.”  
  
So she was a noblewoman.  
  
Evan studied her. She was coldly beautiful, with high cheekbones, a narrow nose, finely-drawn brows, a strong jawline. He itched to draw her.   
  
But he dragged his gaze away, because lingering too long on a woman of high stature and being perceived as offensive was just asking for a night in a local jail, and really, he was getting too old for those.  
  
He pretended to sip at his ale some more, tried to think of a subtle way to fish his phone out of his pocket and send a text message, and then a shadow fell over him.  
  
He looked up, and the woman was sitting beside him. She’d arranged herself artfully on the stool, cloak unfastened, displaying herself to her finest advantage. Evan gave her a once-over and then met her gaze, held it, because he’d been held prisoner in a matriarchal planet before after admiring a pretty local for more than a microsecond.  
  
“I hear you’ve ambitions to seek your fortune in the treasury in the castle in Camelot.” Her voice was deeper for a woman’s, lilting, her accent Irish or something like it.  
  
“You hear correctly,” Evan said.  
  
“What is it you seek?”  
  
“A certain item,” Evan said.  
  
“What sort of...item?”  
  
“An item of power,” Evan said.  
  
The woman arched an eyebrow. “Go on.”  
  
“The item is likely only powerful to me and my people,” Evan said. “But I would be willing to pay fair wages for assistance in acquiring it, and if my business partners helped themselves to other treasures, well - consider it a bonus.”  
  
Elizabeth would have rolled over and died at the thought of stealing from the locals.  
Carter had understood that there was really no diplomatic option to acquire the ZPM.  
  
Woolsey had authorized the mission after Rodney browbeat him into it, and only after Rodney agreed that someone would leave a note detailing their involvement and some form of payment.  
  
The woman eyed him up and down. Then she leaned in, lowered her voice. “Do you believe in magic?”  
  
That wasn’t what Evan had expected. “I know it’s illegal in Camelot.”  
  
“But do you believe in its power?”  
  
“I believe that magic is science we don’t yet understand,” he said.  
  
She blinked, sat back, and all of her seductive charm vanished. “Science?”  
  
Evan reached into his jacket pocket, drew out the little flip notebook and pen he always carried offworld with him. “See this picture of this man?” He flipped it open to the first page and showed it to her.  
  
She nodded, wary.  
  
“Now, watch him move.”  
  
Evan flipped through the pages.  
  
The woman gasped, drew back, hand to her throat. Eyes wide. “What kind of magic is that?”  
  
“Not magic, science.” Evan showed her each page. “See? It’s almost the same drawing over and over again, except modified slightly so when I flip through them fast, it looks like he’s moving.”  
  
“A petty illusion, then.” Her mouth twisted into a moue of disappointment.  
  
So she wanted him to have magic?  
  
Evan put his notebook away, considered. Then he stood up. “Can we discuss this somewhere more private?”  
  
The woman nodded. She held out her hand, and Evan realized - she expected a hand down.  
He took her hand, helped her, but was wary not to get too close lest she plant a knife in his ribs. He’d worked with Teyla and Carter and Teldy too long to assume a woman with a pretty face was incapable of violence, wasn’t a threat.  
  
She led the way to a secluded table in the corner, so Evan followed, sat opposite her.  
  
“Do you have real magic?” the woman asked.  
  
Evan fished his phone out of his jacket. “See for yourself.” He woke it up, and the woman’s eyes went wide when the screen lit. He unlocked the screen with a swipe of his thumb, and she leaned in, peered.  
  
“Is it a scrying mirror? Or a candle? How does it glow?” She angled her body so others in the tavern wouldn’t see what they were doing, which was smart.  
  
“You call it magic, we call it science.”  
  
She shook her head. “I know of no science that would create such a thing.”  
  
“Well, the item we seek - it has the power to make a thousand devices like this work for a thousand years.” Given what Evan knew about ZPMs, he was probably low-balling, but she didn’t know that.  
  
“What is it?”  
  
“A storage device, mostly,” Evan said.   
  
“What does it store?”  
  
“Music, pictures, moving pictures.”  
  
“Like the moving picture you showed me?”  
  
“Better.” Evan tapped at the screen, navigated to a video of Teyla doing a practice routine with her bantos rods. He kept the phone on silent.  
  
The woman stared, awed. “She’s beautiful,” she said finally. “She looks so real. As if there were a tiny person in there.”  
  
“No, it’s just a moving picture,” Evan said. “Here’s some still pictures.”  
  
He’d photographed interesting people, like Sheppard, Teyla, Ronon, Rodney, Zelenka, Kusanagi.  
  
“May I try?” the woman asked.  
  
Evan nodded, slid the phone toward her.  
  
She stretched one hand over it, and then her eyes flared yellow.  
  
Like a goa’uld.  
  
Evan drew his sidearm beneath the table between one heartbeat and the next, terror sparking through him.  
  
But the woman didn’t speak with an inhuman alien voice.  
  
And before Evan’s eyes, the images started to shift, as if she were swiping through them, but she wasn’t touching the screen.  
  
Holy Hanna Barbera on a pogo stick, that woman had  _magic._  
  
The woman found a picture of Teyla playing with Torren, and she paused, expression softening. Then her soft expression shifted into cold fury, and her eyes flared golden again, and the screen went dark.  
  
“You say there is an item in Camelot’s treasury that grants life to more of those devices?”  
  
Evan nodded.   
  
“What is this device?”  
  
“We call it a ZPM. Some people call it a  _potentia,”_  Evan said. He prodded his phone cautiously with one hand, still aiming his pistol at her beneath the table with his other. He unlocked the phone and navigated to a photo of an empty ZPM. “Have you ever seen anything like it?”  
  
“I have been in the treasuries of Camelot many times,” she said, “and I have never seen such a thing. It is a crystal, yes?”  
  
Evan nodded.  
  
“There is a place of many crystals,” the woman said. “And I know how to get there.”  
  
“It’s not in the kingdom of Camelot, is it?” Evan asked.  
  
“It is,” the woman said. “In the Valley of the Fallen Kings.”  
  
“That doesn’t sound ominous at all. Will you take me there?”  
  
The woman sat back, considered. “For a price.”  
  
“What kind of price?”  
  
“Lend me your magic so that I may take what is rightfully mine.”  
  
Unease prickled down Evan’s spine. “What is it that you think is rightfully yours?”  
  
“The throne of Camelot.”  
  
Evan stared at her. “Who  _are_  you?”   
  
“I am the Lady Morgana, daughter and oldest child of King Uther, rightful heir to the throne.”  
  
“As opposed to -”  
  
“His son, Arthur.”  
  
Woolsey was definitely going to say a hard  _no_  to that.  
  
“I’m gonna have to take a pass on that one,” Evan said. Valley of the Fallen Kings. His team could find someone else who knew where that was. He started to rise. “Thanks for the hot tip, milady, but I have to -”  
  
She caught his wrist. “Please.” Her eyes were wide, pleading.  
  
Was she playing him?  
  
Evan was pretty sure she was playing him.  
  
He shook his head. The SGC and Atlantis had a pretty hard and fast rule about not being warmongers. Sure they’d started more than one revolution, helped the people of Abydos overthrow Ra. Intrahuman political struggles, however, were usually a no-go.   
  
Evan moved toward the tavern door, but Morgana was fast. She was on her feet and across the room in a blink. She caught him by the shoulder and pinned him up against the wall with inhuman strength. Her eyes flared yellow again.  
  
“I could make you help me,” she said, all pretense of pleading gone.   
  
“You could,” Evan conceded. “But then you probably wouldn’t be much better than the people you want to overthrow.”  
  
“I’m nothing like them,” Morgana snapped. “I need you to help me so there will be a safe place for me and people like me.”  
  
“I can help you find a safe place without overthrowing a kingdom,” Evan said, because the SGC and Atlantis has done that before.   
  
Morgana leaned in closer. Anyone watching probably thought they were being amorous. Given that Morgana had been the instigator and no one was yelling for law enforcement, Evan figured he was safe from law enforcement. For now.   
  
Her eyes were still blazing - not yellow but golden.   
  
“Are you afraid of me?” she whispered.   
  
“Should I be?”  
  
“I have magic.”  
  
“Does that make you evil?”  
  
“Many would say so.”  
  
“Doesn’t make it true.”  
  
She gazed into his eyes.   
  
His phone buzzed in his pocket.   
  
She jerked back but didn’t release him. “What was that?”  
  
Evan eased his hand into his pocket, fished out his phone. “Message from my team, I expect.”  
  
“What does it say?”  
  
He showed her the screen.   
  
“That script is unknown to me.”  
  
Evan checked the text message. “They’re asking me to check in, let them know if I’m all right.”  
  
“And if you fail to respond?”  
  
“They’ll come after me.”  
  
Morgana’s eyes blazed brighter, and Evan felt a thrum in his blood, in the back of his mind, like Ancient tech.   
  
Was her magic some kind of tech?  
  
“I could take you from here. They would never find you.”  
  
“They will always find me,” Evan said. It was true. Unless she managed to disarm his subcutaneous tracker, Atlantis would be able to find him, even if it meant a long wait for the  _Daedalus._  
Morgana’s expression was grave. “My people shouldn’t have to run.”  
  
Evan nodded. “You’re right. You shouldn’t have to. Doesn’t mean your best option is regicide, patricide, and war. Do you want the citizens of Camelot to fear you?”  
  
“They should.” Morgana still hadn’t released him, but she hadn’t tried to really restrain him either. If her magic worked like he thought it did, she probably didn’t even need to be in direct physical contact with him to control him.   
  
He tilted his head to peer at her. “I thought you wanted to be accepted.”  
  
“You don’t know what it’s like to be -”  
  
“Mocked? Loathed? Hunted down? Maybe even tortured?”   
  
Morgana drew back further, surprised, and she released him.   
  
His phone buzzed again. “What should I tell my friends?”  
  
“That you’re safe.” The gold light in her eyes faded and she turned away from him.   
  
He tapped out a reply that he’d established contact with a local and was gaining intel. “Should I tell them we have help in what we seek?”  
  
She turned to him again. “And what of what I seek?”  
  
“I won’t help you start a war.”  
  
“But a place for me and my kind.”  
  
Evan pocketed his phone. “You seem to know something of science. You know the sun, the moon, the stars?”  
  
She nodded.  
  
“What about other planets?”  
  
She nodded again.  
  
“How would you like a planet all your own?”  
  
Her eyes went wide.  
  
“There be a caveat, of course,” Evan said.  
  
She narrowed her eyes. “What kind?”  
  
“Have you ever heard of the Wraith?”


End file.
